Birgit Hopfener, Associate Professor and Confucius Chair, Art History, SSAC, Carleton University
“Contemporary Art Objects of Transmission”

This lecture takes the globally situated contemporary Chinese artist Ai Weiwei as a case study to examine art historical and cultural theoretical frameworks and conditions through which meaning can be and has been attributed to this artist’s interest in the past. Professor Hopfener interrogate selected works such as “Two Joined Square Tables” (2005), “Still Life” (1995-2000), “Fragments of a Temple” (2005), “Dropping a Han Urn” (1995) and how they engage with traditional Chinese materials, forms and techniques from production and reception aesthetic perspectives, shedding light on their multiple epistemological, art historical, socio-political and geo-political conditions and structures of meaning making. Arguing that relating to the past through art – despite disruptions – has been a recurrent issue in Chinese art history in different historical, socio-political and geo-political contexts (Cacchione 2014, Murck 1976, Wang 2011, Wu 2010), Professor Hopfener seeks to uncover how Ai Weiwei’s works can also be interpreted against this art historical background as critical contemporary “objects of transmission” (Chang 1999) and agents of history writing.